1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile terminal that has telephonic communication capability and includes a control means, which carries out both a standby operation for monitoring an incoming call and an image processing operation for processing an image captured by an image capture means. The present invention also relates to a program executed in such a mobile terminal.
2. Description of Related Art
A mobile telephone having a camera is known as one type of mobile terminals. Such a mobile telephone is capable of transmitting an image captured by the camera along with an e-mail message. The mobile telephone is also capable of displaying the captured image as a standby screen image or an incoming call notification screen image on its display. These features enhance the entertainment value of the mobile telephone. In order to reduce a cost of the mobile telephone, the mobile telephone can have one CPU (Central Processing Unit) that carries out both a standby operation for monitoring an incoming call and an image processing operation for processing the image captured by the camera. More specifically, as shown in FIGS. 7A and 7B, the CPU can conduct the standby operation at predetermined time intervals, which are defined by a corresponding communication standard. Furthermore, the CPU can conduct the image processing operation for processing the captured image at the time periods, during which the standby operation is not conducted.
When a state of a radio environment around the mobile telephone is relatively good, the time required for searching a paging channel becomes relatively short, and thus the time required for conducting the standby operation becomes relatively short. On the other hand, when the state of the radio environment is relatively bad, the time required for searching the paging channel becomes relatively long, and thus the time required for conducting the standby operation becomes relatively long. As a result, in the above arrangement where the one CPU carries out both the standby operation and the image processing operation, when the state of the radio environment changes from the relatively good state to the relatively bad state, the time required for the standby operation becomes relatively long. In such a case, the standby operation cannot be finished when the image processing operation needs to be started (see t1 and t2 in FIG. 7B).
In the above arrangement where the CPU cannot simultaneously carry out both the standby operation and the image processing operation, when the standby operation is not finished at the time of starting the image processing operation, the image processing operation cannot be started if priority of the standby operation is higher than that of the image processing operation. This causes removal of some image frames, causing a reduction in the number of the image frames. Thus, image capturing performance of the mobile telephone is disadvantageously reduced. Furthermore, even if the CPU is capable of simultaneously carrying out both the standby operation and the image processing operation, performance of the CPU dedicated for the image processing operation is reduced since the CPU needs to sprit its performance between the standby operation and the image processing operation. Thus, the performance of the CPU dedicated for the image processing operation is reduced, and thus the number of the image frames is reduced. This causes a reduction in the image capturing performance of the mobile telephone.